My pictures are confused, abrupt, adamant, honest and entirely lacking in foresight. They are born from an argument between life's experiences, subconscious impulses and my own muddled aesthetic preferences; this dialogue is strained but ongoing. They are made possible only by the depth of my illness and the gift of my sobriety. I have accepted both graciously. They are, individually and as a group, an unwitting self-portrait.

Monday, January 20, 2014

"King Of Kowloon" finally gets respect.

NY Times May 4, 2011

By JOYCE HOR-CHUNG LAU
HONG KONG —

A toothless garbageman who once wandered Hong Kong’s
streets with dingy bags of ink and brushes tied to his crutches is now
the subject of a major retrospective. About 300 calligraphic works by
the late Tsang Tsou-choi — who is best known by his self-dubbed title,
the King of Kowloon — are showing at the ArtisTree art space in a high
glass tower.

The show, “Memories of King Kowloon” (until May 31), in a spacious
corporate-sponsored dimly lighted gallery, quiet as a library, would
have been foreign territory for Mr. Tsang. He was most at home under
the tropical sun and neon lights. An outsider artist, he spent half a
century dodging security guards and police officers as he obsessively
covered lampposts and mailboxes, slums and ferry piers, with his
distinctive Chinese text.

Mr. Tsang, who died in 2007 at the age of 85, created an estimated
55,000 outdoor pieces, almost all of which have been washed away,
painted over or torn down by the authorities and real estate
developers. He was a rebel graffiti artist decades before it was
fashionable, creating art brut in a city that has no time for
outsiders.
Mr. Tsang arrived in Hong Kong as a teenage refugee from Guangdong, a
southern province bordering Hong Kong, in the 1930s, and began his
urban painting in the 1950s.
He toiled under the delusion that he was the rightful heir and ruler of
the Kowloon Peninsula, dismissing all political factions that had
controlled the area: the Qing Dynasty until 1898, the British until
1997 and China today. In his thick scrawl, he marked his territory with
“royal decrees” and a “family tree,” using the names of his ancestors
and eight children to build an imaginary web of princes and princesses.

Intentionally or not, he tapped into the unease of a populace tossed
between two governments. He defaced, with equal joy, Queen Elizabeth
II’s insignia on colonial-era post boxes and campaign posters for Hong
Kong politicians.

His real-life wife and children shrank from attention when Mr. Tsang’s
art became known, and even held a decoy funeral when he died to divert
fans and the news media.
“The way society saw him, as an insane person, caused his family to
feel ashamed,” said Joel Chung, a longtime friend of Mr. Tsang’s who
lent hundreds of ink-on-paper works for the show. “He loved his family
but, by figuring them so prominently in his work, he embarrassed them
and, in their eyes, brought them down in society.”

Mr. Chung, an artist and curator who teaches at a creative arts high
school in Kowloon, said that most of his students had been taught to
shun Mr. Tsang for being mentally ill. “Generations of parents and
grandparents have been pulling kids away from him on the street saying,
‘That man is dirty and crazy. Don’t go near him.’ ”

Mr. Chung recounted meeting Mr. Tsang in the 1980s. “He was working at
a busy intersection and the crowd around him was so great that I didn’t
even see him at first,” he said. “There was this shirtless old man,
sitting on a trash can, painting. I stood there transfixed for an hour,
but he didn’t notice me until he ran out of ink and started hollering
for more. He never said please. He was the king, and kings don’t have
to say ‘please’ to their subjects.”
For years, Mr. Chung and others in the art scene bought him food and introduced him to writers and visiting artists.
Mr. Tsang’s entry into the mainstream was a 1997 exhibition at the Hong
Kong Arts Centre, followed by a show at the 2003 Venice Biennale. In
2009, two years after he died, one of his pieces sold at an auction at
Sotheby’s.

Mr. Tsang, who began receiving disability and welfare payments when a
falling garbage bin impaired both legs in 1987, never made a living
from his art.
“It earned him some pocket money, but it made no difference to him,”
Mr. Chung said. “He just handed the cash over to his wife. Except for
eating, sleeping and bathing — well, he didn’t bathe often — he was
painting.”

The colorful ink-on-paper pieces make up the best part of the ArtisTree
retrospective. But there was little the organizers could do to
replicate Mr. Tsang’s real legacy: his street art has been reduced to
only four sites, including a single pillar now preserved at the old
Star Ferry pier.
Mr. Tsang’s work is supplemented with photographs, a documentary film,
installations and pieces by other artists said to be inspired by Mr.
Tsang.
The presentation seems almost too slick for its subject. The space is
dark and serious. Newspaper clippings and objects from Mr. Tsang’s
apartment — a crushed Coke can, brushes, empty ink bottles — are
displayed in light boxes, as if they were treasures. To show where Mr.
Tsang’s works once existed, there is a glowing 3-D replica of Hong
Kong’s skyline that looks like a property developer’s model.

Mr. Tsang’s scribbles were once part of a messy but wonderfully human
cityscape, and nostalgia for him has grown as modern complexes have
replaced wet markets, family shops and streetside stalls.
“Hong Kong has been tidied to the point that it no longer makes sense,”
Mr. Chung said. “It’s only tall glass buildings, where people go
straight from the home to the metro to the mall, all in air-conditioned
interiors.”

Mr. Chung acknowledged the irony of having a King of Kowloon retrospective in a skyscraper.
“Ideally, his art would be anywhere and everywhere, but it’s too late
for that now,” he said. “People in the art world would probably not go
seek out some graffiti in Mongkok anyway, so it’s good that we have a
show here.”

Swire Properties’ Island East complex, which is home to both ArtisTree
and the offices of 300 multinationals, is a place of uniformed guards
and immaculate lobbies, where nobody would dare litter, much less paint
graffiti on a wall.
Babby Fung, a spokeswoman for Swire, called Tsang a “cultural icon.”
When asked how Swire would react to a modern-day King of Kowloon
decorating its glass towers with ink, she replied, “We’re not focusing
just on his graffiti. Instead, we’re seeing his as a part of Hong Kong
history.”
Pressed further, she added, “We’d communicate with him first to ascertain if he was really an artist.”